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Here's the thing. Even if you ASSUME that a group of people like Rina's using a machine shop in an unmonitored ward to build home made guns is impossible (which doesn't seem like a good bet to make in the first place), this doesn't even cover the possibility of foreign terrorism.

Here's the thing: manufacturing weapons takes machinery and materials that have to be gathered from all sorts of places. Anyone bearing an intention of the sort would instantly be detected by the scanners. Take note that while there are blind spots in the scanning network, it is virtually impossible to go from one part of town to another without passing at least one scanner. It's an impractical venture; hence, simpler tools like molotov cocktails are preferred.

Still, the threat of being shot by a Dominator has proven sufficient to keep such radical elements at bay. Remember that just about any revolutionary force can only succeed through the consent of a good bulk of the people living under an established rule. At most, they only exist as pests to be snuffed out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

You wouldn't even need to sneak them through customs at the harbor. Customs consists of unarmed robots, backed up by maybe a dozen actually armed police officers per major city. The terrorist commandos can then proceed to attack and destroy ANYTHING they please.

Now this one doesn't hold much water because we've had little to no information as to how this society interacts with other societies, so the most we can make on this tangent is a lot of ungrounded assumptions. In fact, considering the sort of society this is, I wouldn't be surprised if it was extremely careful as to the kinds of information that goes into public awareness, and as a result create a strong resistance against foreign influence.

But like I said, this is all speculation on my part, no different from your own claims.

__________________

"There’s an up higher than up, but at the very top, down is all there is."

One thing I'm curious about - Is this anime slated for the new noitaminA standard of 22 episodes? I ask because this current arc has felt like a climatic arc to me.

However, I hope it is 22 episodes, because at a world-building level, I think there are a lot of important questions that ideally will be answered (and any extra episodes after this current arc concludes could serve to answer them). Perhaps the most pertinent is what the world as a whole is like in Psycho-Pass. I get the impression from some of what Gu Seung has stated that Sybil is not a global system. For all we know, it might not even exist outside of Japan.

Let's say it doesn't exist outside of Japan. Well, if it doesn't, Japan would want to give it the best "public face" possible so that other countries don't hold Sybil against Japan. Perhaps that could explain why you have all human Law Enforcement officers and no armies of robots/droids patrolling the streets.

"See, Mr. American President, our Sibyl system has given us a very civilized and humane social order. In spite of the misgivings many of the politicians from your country have expressed about Sybil, we have not turn into a people without spirit that relies too much on machines."

One thing I'm curious about - Is this anime slated for the new noitaminA standard of 22 episodes? I ask because this current arc has felt like a climatic arc to me.

However, I hope it is 22 episodes, because at a world-building level, I think there are a lot of important questions that ideally will be answered (and any extra episodes after this current arc concludes could serve to answer them). Perhaps the most pertinent is what the world as a whole is like in Psycho-Pass. I get the impression from some of what Gu Seung has stated that Sybil is not a global system. For all we know, it might not even exist outside of Japan.

yes, there will be 22 episodes, and for my part if the episode 16 there is the famous "kougami vs Makishima" in the tower as I think, I wonder what will be next up episode 22

Last I checked Japan had plenty of cops with guns and riot gear. So I don't think Urobuchi is making a criticism about that.

As other people have mentioned. At it's core, the world of Psycho-Pass is an authoritarian state.

As for what the creator of this anime is critisizing in the japanese society .... well, i think its pretty obvious. Japanese people are and always have been a herd of sheep. They obey commands, they are loyal to their superiors/companies/bosses without questioning any of their decisions....

and on a side note, have you noticed how many animes keep popping up with the same theme? I mean every season we get at least one anime, with a dystopian controlling society. It would seem that this is a big subject in japan either way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

This is significant because the system isn't that old. Guys like Masaoka were already veteran police officers when they implemented the system. So where'd this army of head busting cops go?

You got a point there!!! But what strikes me as even more odd is where did all the criminals go. At the beginning of the series I had to really supress my feeling of disbelieve, when they explained how the whole psycho pass system works, because if they really locked up anybody, who has aggressive tendencies and/or entertains socially unacceptable ideas, who would left out there?

I say the crushing majority of people are deep down animals, but luckily for the society, most of us have this savage side under control. However, the scanners look past the outward appearance and measure directly whats going on inside your mind. Hence, I wonder, how come the majority of people manged to turn from potential criminals to meek, mellow, no-bad-thoughts-having sheep?

Of course if the sybil system was in place for centuries, you could argue, that humans became this meak through decades of selective breeding. All the individuals with violent tendencies were taken out of circulation and only unproblematic people were allowed to reproduce.... but thats not the case here, is it?

It's a matter of time. They only had approximately 7 hours or so before the helmets became widespread. . I don't expect a society which has basically relinquished possession of old weaponry to be able to adequately respond to that quickly. Something like reprogramming all the drones would definitely not be an easy thing either I would presume.

They have face-recognition features, in addition to emotion reading features. Adding a priority "if it wears a helmet, shoot it" order should be trivial compared to what they already do.

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Furthermore, even if this society is "totalitarian," it has an appearance to keep up. It can't just start shooting everybody on the streets with a helmet, they would have to give out warnings to everybody in the city first and then take action after that has been done. This is kinda hard considering people started fighting back against the helmet users to protect themselves and started rioting themselves.

No, they don't have to care about appearances. Makishima did the job for them to telling everyone helmet wearers are dangerous sociopaths. What are they going to do when the dust settles, press charges for police brutality? In a world where thought crimes are a thing? Where toddlers get life sentences?

They have face-recognition features, in addition to emotion reading features. Adding a priority "if it wears a helmet, shoot it" order should be trivial compared to what they already do.

But it seems like the robots can't even scan the person without being completely redirected. If the input data is completely cut off then how would it be possible to tell if he/she is wearing a helmet? It is not like the Psycho pass reading is transferred on to the helmet-person but the entire scanning process is being redirected to another person of nearby proximity.

Sure there might be countermeasure to the jamming device but the key here is that their society is entirely reliant on their security system. If it fails, which it has not for quite a while, then there is nothing they can do about it. Just look at how little police force they have with ten to twenty officers pfffft. Do they really have the resource to counter a genius hacker in less than a day? I do agree that something more should have been done once they saw the helmet.

I said it in a longer post ill say it a again as recent episdoes show can we really call Maki bad. Really what other options did he have to over throw sybil aside from throwing everything into chaos there was nothing more he could do. If kogami and Akanes friend not been killed would we be calling Maki evil I think not. As I said if Maki does not turn out to be a survival of the fittest type he is good if he does he is bad him being good or bad all comes down to what he wants when he gets rid of sybil and what his definition of freedom is.

I'm sorry, but normal people will never refrain from calling a ruthless murderer with no regard for human life at all, "a bad person", and that's just putting it lightly, since he kills them for no apparent reason other than being bored, perhaps.

Don't give me that "Makishima isn't bored", there's a difference between all the plots he does, and the killing-for-no-reason that he does.

Here's the thing: manufacturing weapons takes machinery and materials that have to be gathered from all sorts of places. Anyone bearing an intention of the sort would instantly be detected by the scanners. Take note that while there are blind spots in the scanning network, it is virtually impossible to go from one part of town to another without passing at least one scanner. It's an impractical venture; hence, simpler tools like molotov cocktails are preferred.

I'm not sure I totally buy that. Not with how Rina's pro democratic rock star group has been able to move about tossing molotov cocktails at things. If crime coefficient readings were that effective at picking up malcontents, I don't see why they'd have needed Yayoi's help in trying to find out who they were.

Certainly you'd need some kind of immunity if you were gonna try something on the scale that Makishima tried, i.e, manufacturing HUNDREDS of high tech pieces of electronic equipment and distributing them to a large group of people. But if you wanted to make something more low tech than that when you should have access to mail order parts (people with crime coefficient seem to be able to hide it by staying at home) and 3D printing?

For a potential dissident, there's too much hypothetical payoff to not try this kind of stuff.

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Originally Posted by Qilin

Now this one doesn't hold much water because we've had little to no information as to how this society interacts with other societies, so the most we can make on this tangent is a lot of ungrounded assumptions.

We know there are *border security drones*, that are implied to be armed with lethal weapons. This almost automatically makes the assumption that this society can conceive of the danger of foreign threats. And frankly? Assuming that SOMEBODY in the world doesn't like you seems like a pretty good bet when you consider that the history of the world can be simplified down to this.

"HEY! Somebody might not like us!" is hardly an ungrounded assumption.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qilin

In fact, considering the sort of society this is, I wouldn't be surprised if it was extremely careful as to the kinds of information that goes into public awareness, and as a result create a strong resistance against foreign influence.

what does that even mean in relation to what I said? Are you trying to imply that Japan in Psychopass doesn't engage in international trade? Or that thinking down on the foreigner ideas confers an invulnerability against bullets?

Frankly those are MUCH bigger assumptions than anything I've come up with.

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Originally Posted by Izayoi

If the input data is completely cut off then how would it be possible to tell if he/she is wearing a helmet?

This is completely independent of something like a psycho-pass scan. All a robot would need to rely on is its normal optics and sensors. If the facial recognition software is good enough to identify one humans face from another, then identifying such a conspicuous looking helmet is relatively trivial.

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Originally Posted by BoyTitan

If kogami and Akanes friend not been killed would we be calling Maki evil I think not.

Yes....yes we would...cause those aren't the only people Maki has killed, or has been an accomplice to having killed.

"If a murderer never murdered anybody he wouldn't be a murderer" is about the most intellectually worthless idea I've heard all week.

I'm not sure I totally buy that. Not with how Rina's pro democratic rock star group has been able to move about tossing molotov cocktails at things. If crime coefficient readings were that effective at picking up malcontents, I don't see why they'd have needed Yayoi's help in trying to find out who they were.

The thing to note about them is that their activities were localized to a single area. Yes, they were causing a ruckus, but it was in a shady part of town populated mostly by lowlifes and thugs, hardly a threat to the society as a whole.

The thing about needing Yayoi is that a good deal of people there already had a bad hue whether they were involved in the incident or not, so they needed her to pinpoint exactly where to find those targets they were looking for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

We know there are *border security drones*, that are implied to be armed with lethal weapons. This almost automatically makes the assumption that this society can conceive of the danger of foreign threats. And frankly? Assuming that SOMEBODY in the world doesn't like you seems like a pretty good bet when you consider that the history of the world can be simplified down to this.

"HEY! Somebody might not like us!" is hardly an ungrounded assumption.

What I'm implying here is that the lax security you described at length might not even apply when it comes to defending national borders, especially if you assume that Sybil only applies to those who live under the society's jurisdiction. Heck, for Sybil to have survived for so long, it would have had to exist in relative seclusion to other societies. There has to be a strong policy against immigrants in place here or else it wouldn't make sense... unless foreign societies exist under similar conditions, which I don't think is likely.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Rambo

what does that even mean in relation to what I said? Are you trying to imply that Japan in Psychopass doesn't engage in international trade? Or that thinking down on the foreigner ideas confers an invulnerability against bullets?

Obviously, trade is the minimum necessity of foreign interaction. But that doesn't mean that foreign influence can't be limited in every other way. One way is by closing the gates on foreign immigrants and tourists. Another is by drastically limiting exposure to foreign ideas. It's all a matter of effective information control.

__________________

"There’s an up higher than up, but at the very top, down is all there is."

As for what the creator of this anime is critisizing in the japanese society .... well, i think its pretty obvious. Japanese people are and always have been a herd of sheep. They obey commands, they are loyal to their superiors/companies/bosses without questioning any of their decisions....

and on a side note, have you noticed how many animes keep popping up with the same theme? I mean every season we get at least one anime, with a dystopian controlling society. It would seem that this is a big subject in japan either way.

Don't you think that is kind of harsh from an outsider? I've been to Japan, a couple times and I wouldn't describe the people as "sheep". I am not saying there is nothing to criticize but again as someone who is not Japanese I don't know if I have the full background & understanding of stuff.

Anyways I was thinking of more direct things like low crime rate, but high suicide rate & high confession rate but not necessarily all these confessions are true. This is just things I've been reading recently about Japan that Gen could be criticizing. Then again he could be criticizing something much more broader about society always following and not questioning things as well. I would honestly love to hear his thoughts on this as I would feel it would give a fuller appreciation of the series that maybe I am missing (not that I don't appreciate the series).

On another note I don't think Japan has anymore dystopia stories than other countries. It seems quite common in science fiction in general.

Don't you think that is kind of harsh from an outsider? I've been to Japan, a couple times and I wouldn't describe the people as "sheep". I am not saying there is nothing to criticize but again as someone who is not Japanese I don't know if I have the full background & understanding of stuff.

Anyways I was thinking of more direct things like low crime rate, but high suicide rate & high confession rate but not necessarily all these confessions are true. This is just things I've been reading recently about Japan that Gen could be criticizing. Then again he could be criticizing something much more broader about society always following and not questioning things as well. I would honestly love to hear his thoughts on this as I would feel it would give a fuller appreciation of the series that maybe I am missing (not that I don't appreciate the series).

On another note I don't think Japan has anymore dystopia stories than other countries. It seems quite common in science fiction in general.

While I agree that a downright comparison to sheep seems kind of harsh, I do hear everywhere that Japanese society is very collective-minded (especially compared to generally more "individualistic" Western societies) and that it expects people to simply endure their personal affairs, problems and complaints in silence for the sake of the "herd". So Gen may be trying to present the Sybil System as a possible outcome of that.

And though we haven't really heard much about suicides in Psycho-Pass, I believe it's common knowledge that Japan's high suicide rate is a result of its strong social pressure and stress (which also seems to be the reason for all the hikikomoris and whatnot), which brings to mind the conversation Makishima and Senguuji had in episode 7, about how, under the Sybil System, people's sense of stress has numbed so much they can't even recognize stimulation anymore (and thus life expectancy levels have decreased). In other words, I suppose the Sybil System could also be seen as a possible drastic measure against the previously high levels of pressure and stress, only the results haven't been good in the sense that they've now reduced people to the other extreme, which is also quite dangerous.

Though you could also say that the Psycho-Pass system is actually a new source of social pressure and perhaps one greater than ever before, due to the constant pressure of keeping your hue unclouded for the sake of society (Ginoza is a good example of this), which sometimes, as we've seen, even becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that results in making "criminals" out of people who otherwise might not have become so.

It's possible Urobuchi is criticizing aspects of a collective society but there are strengths and weaknesses of both an individual and collective society. Japan is also not the only country in the world with that type of culture. Also I haven't necessarily seen anything in the story where "lack of individuality" is the problem here.

Good point about the suicide rate and the lack of stress in the Psycho Pass world

edit: well I guess you can say the sybil system has taken away the people's free will which is a form of individuality.

Kagari gets killed. Especially since it looks like Ko and crew might run into Shogo.

Because I absolutely don't see all of the main cast surviving this, other than Ko or Akane. No fucking way and not to sound bloodthirsty, but it would make a big impact storywise if someone from the main team got killed off.

I don't think Shion would get killed off though. She's in her office all the time.

Kagari gets killed. Especially since it looks like Ko and crew might run into Shogo.

Because I absolutely don't see all of the main cast surviving this, other than Ko or Akane. No fucking way and not to sound bloodthirsty, but it would make a big impact storywise if someone from the main team got killed off.

I don't think Shion would get killed off though. She's in her office all the time.

For Shion as I said this is the only in team that has no risk of getting killed ... unless terrorist decided to destroy the main building "BAC" where all work

Sibyl has a throughput & computing power not possible with their current technology,...and the heart of sibyl is concentrated on one place, which is really bad security wise... wahhh is the DIRECTOR Sibyl !!! ....and Akane is the next in line, if the director dies.... whew what a thought...wonder if it 's true.

.

That's what I thought when Gu seung talked about Sybil being alive. Although I don't know what makes you think akane is gonna replace her.

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Originally Posted by Triple_R

It honestly makes me wonder if Japan is really so different from North American and European nations as I've been led to believe.

It isn't so different than the west. But I've already talked to you about that.

Also if Sibyl is alive, then the fact that the city has no riot police/military/etc, is probably on purpose. . .to keep the people from shutting it down and "killing" it.

They have face-recognition features, in addition to emotion reading features. Adding a priority "if it wears a helmet, shoot it" order should be trivial compared to what they already do.

Developing the software would probably be trivial, but they would have to update it to the entire system completely. I don't have any reason to believe that such an update process would be completed within the span of 6-7 hours.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

No, they don't have to care about appearances. Makishima did the job for them to telling everyone helmet wearers are dangerous sociopaths. What are they going to do when the dust settles, press charges for police brutality? In a world where thought crimes are a thing? Where toddlers get life sentences?

When people who had acceptable pp levels before the helmet came into use start getting shot on sight I think this will shake up their society even more than it already is. Their whole society is built on these ratings. People getting life sentences because their reading is bad is different from people with acceptable psycho pass readings getting suddenly killed on sight.

Granted, the sibyl system might already be on its last legs with Makishima's actions, but it's possible that nothing will change at all, so long as the problem doesn't even become bigger than it is currently.